Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill

Thank you, Mr Chair, for your helpfulness to the members. I take a call in the Committee stage of the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill. I also have some questions for the Minister in the chair, Mark Mitchell—and can I congratulate the Minister in the chair on his delegation as Minister in charge of these bills. I am assuming that he is well across the detail and will be happy to answer all questions.

My first question relates to some confusion during the first reading of this bill around the fact that it was as if there was a parallel process occurring on election advertising and opening and closing statements. There were submissions being held at the Justice and Electoral Committee on this matter at the same time as there was a process being undertaken by the then Minister of Broadcasting about digital convergence. There was a report titled Content Regulation in a Converged World, which contained a section called “Election programmes—Part 6 of the Broadcasting Act”, which was seeking feedback from the sector or from whoever wanted to submit on these matters, amongst others, as well. There was confusion about how and why that parallel process was occurring and how it would be married up.

I note that in the commentary on the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill, which we are now debating, there is a phrase on page 2 that says: “The Government response to the Inquiry noted that the Government would consider the other recommendations relating to Part 6 of the Broadcasting Act 1989 as part of the Government’s intended Digital Convergence Bill.” That is yet to be tabled in this House and, as such, is yet to be debated, so we do not know what is in it.

My question to the Minister this afternoon is how does he see the separate discussion that has been happening around this convergence paper, under the auspices of the then Minister of Broadcasting—and I would note that there is no longer a Minister of Broadcasting, because Bill English disestablished the position in December. As I understand it from Radio New Zealand representatives who appeared at a select committee today, there is still no delegated function for that, so there is no Minister. But what is the status of the discussion in that digital convergence paper, alongside this bill that we have got here today?

I think that it is a valid question because I have had people who submitted on the convergence bill tell me: “Well, we submitted on that particular paper on this matter, and yet there’s another piece of legislation that’s had a separate series of submissions before a different select committee.” I think that is a valid question and an important question for the Minister to answer as his first question, perhaps, to the chair.

Ultimately, Labour supports this particular bill that is before us. I think my colleague Jacinda Ardern, who took the lead in the select committee, made a number of worthwhile points around the anachronism of the existing opening and closing statements on television, which are, essentially, out of date and have dropping viewership. In terms of their value as election engagement tools, it has been diminishing. Although this bill does not change the general rules around electoral advertising, it is modernising and making more flexible this means of engagement with voters. My other colleague David Parker, who spoke before me, talked about the things that are not being done—and we will get to that when we get to that part of the bill—and the disenfranchisement of voters by other means, which we do have a number of questions about.

Here, though, is a sensible change that is allowing for engagement to take place. It is just making it more flexible, given that viewers and potential voters out there are not necessarily tuned in to TVNZ to watch the opening and closing statements. As we saw at the last election, many of them were watching a rugby game, so this just gives more flexibility to the parties. It is fair; it operates across all political parties. It actually increases the quantum allocation, as I understand it, which, again, is in line with making a commitment to increasing voter engagement. We support that, but I do have a question for the Minister in the chair, and I hope he will answer it.

I am very pleased to take a call on the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill at its Committee stage. I want to welcome some of the provisions in this bill because, it seems to me, they are simply catching up with technology and catching up with modern reality, and we certainly need to do that.

I note that this bill, for example, removes the requirements for Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand to provide time for the opening and closing addresses in a party’s political campaign. Of course, when these were introduced there were only a couple of TV channels—TV1 and TV2. Most people would watch them, and they would watch intently as those opening and closing addresses were broadcast. Now the reality is that there are many, many more channels, and the result has been that when those opening and closing broadcasts are aired, most people simply change the channel and watch something else. The viewership of those opening and closing broadcasts has not been great. If the intention is to ensure that voters are informed when they make their decisions at the ballot box, it simply is not meeting it, and therefore removing that requirement is a very sensible thing.

It is also sensible to allow parties to use their allocations to pay for advertising on the internet. As a result of technology convergence, of course, many people are now watching their television on the internet. Parties should be able to purchase advertising during, for example, live streaming of television content and other forms of internet advertising. That is just keeping up with technology, so I welcome those provisions.

But I do have some questions. I note that the bill removes the current requirement for broadcasters to submit returns of all election programmes broadcast. I have some concern about this. Although I recognise the practical difficulty in encouraging internet content providers to provide such a breakdown, one of the historical things that this requirement has highlighted is where a party has overspent its allocation. If we go back to 2005, when the National Party claimed that it did not know that GST was supposed to be included in its expenditure, that was actually highlighted by the broadcasters’ returns, which showed that the National Party had significantly overspent its broadcasting allocation and was therefore in breach of the law. That would not have been known had these returns from the broadcasters not been required.

My question is: if we are not going to have the expense returns—which, it seems to me, are no longer practical to have—will there be a requirement in the expense returns for the political parties to specify in some detail what advertising has been purchased with their broadcasting allocation? It seems to me that simply saying that they purchased a package of broadcast time that is worth X dollars does not actually provide the level of detail that will allow the public to determine whether or not the allocation has been appropriately spent or overspent. Will that return require a level of detail that will ensure that there is transparency and that all political parties are actually complying with the law? As I said, going back to the 2005 election, it was those returns from the broadcasters that allowed the public to identify that one of the political parties had significantly overspent its allocation.

The second clause that I want to turn my attention to—if I can just find it—is the clause that deals with candidate advertising. At the moment, candidates can broadcast an advertisement that is only for themselves and, effectively, does not mention their party or encourage their voters to vote for their party. It is purely about them winning a constituency seat and cannot be a party political broadcast or a party advertisement, but it can be an advertisement for the candidate. If we look at new section 70(3)(e), inserted by clause 4, basically, it allows a broadcaster to broadcast a candidate’s advertisement “for a fee that may, but need not, be paid from money allocated to a party or group of related parties”. What this is doing, if I am correct, is it is allowing candidates to use a share of their party’s broadcast allocation for a candidate campaign, and that will then need to be declared as a donation to that candidate.

Candidates at the moment are restricted to expenditure of just over $25,000—I know that the limit is adjusted for each campaign. They are restricted to being able to spend that much money on their campaign, and that includes their broadcasting. At the moment, if they pay for broadcasting and they pay for it out of their own personal campaign expenses, it is deemed to be their expense and they would have to find the money for that from their donations or from their personal contributions to the campaign. If it is paid for out of their party’s broadcast allocation, and therefore has to be treated as a donation, does that not, effectively, lower the overall spending limit for that party?

At the moment, the party will have its party allocation of what it is allowed to spend of its own money. It will have each individual candidate’s expenditure limits, and then it will have what is currently the broadcast allocation on top of that. The way this new section seems to be worded, if a party spends some of the broadcast allocation on the candidate and thereby treats it as a donation to the candidate, it is actually reducing the overall amount that that party can spend in total. Some clarity around that would, I think, be useful, because that does not seem to be particularly clear.

The criteria that the Electoral Commission uses when determining the allocation of funding to each political party include things like support at by-elections, support at opinion polls, and support at previous general elections. Those are all quantifiable and easy measures to identify, but the one that is a little bit more subjective is in new section 78(2)(d), inserted by clause 4, which says that the commission would consider in making this allocation “any relationships that exist between a party and any other party;”.

That is a very subjective thing, and I wonder what sorts of relationships the commission would take into account. For example, there are coalition governing arrangements between parties on the governing side, or, in the absence of coalition arrangements, there are often cooperation arrangements between governing parties, and there are now some cooperation arrangements on this side of the House. Would those be the types of agreements that would be taken into consideration when determining the allocation? Because it seems to me that it would probably not be appropriate. On the other hand, if parties were going to campaign on a joint ticket, for example, then that might be something the commission would take into account.

Therefore, I guess I would like to see some clarity around what the arrangements are that the commission would take into account, and what the arrangements are that would clearly fall outside of that. It seems to me that the clause is relatively broadly worded at the moment, and that could allow the commission to take into account matters that the Parliament did not intend for it to take into account, and that is simply because we have allowed that with a fairly broad wording of the bill. So I am looking forward to the contributions that the Minister might want to make on that. Those are the main, I guess, questions that I have at this point on this particular bill.

New Zealand First is opposed to this bill as a whole because we think that the existing provisions for opening and closing addresses are perfectly satisfactory and need not be changed. But I am not going to repeat my second reading speech on that, because that is not necessary. The point I want to make here is that if this change is going to go ahead then it needs to be satisfactorily and properly considered, and it was not.

It was not, because it was a rushed bill inserted into the system, really as a result of the introduction of the Electoral Amendment Bill. It had not been considered at that time. The Minister decided to try to insert it, and it has ended up as a separate bill. I agree with the Law Society in particular, which made a submission on the Electoral Amendment Bill saying that the whole thing has not been given proper consideration or, in particular, enough time for consideration. This particular bill demonstrates the results when things are not properly considered and poor decisions are made.

I want to refer to one area in particular. That is the fact that the bill re-enacts the existing provisions relating to the allocations to political parties. That is actually a critical consideration. It is all very well to eliminate the opening and closing addresses on the State-owned broadcasting facilities, but if the criteria for the allocation of funding are also not addressed then that is a job that is not completely done. So just re-enacting that without the agreement of all the parties, despite New Zealand First writing to the Associate Minister of Justice and requesting that that be done—the Minister just blasted ahead anyway, and all of the other parties other than New Zealand First think that it should just go ahead. I can understand why, because they see themselves as being somewhat advantaged by it, whereas I think New Zealand First and other small parties are disadvantaged by it.

The reasons I give are these—and if you look at the criteria you can actually see why. These criteria desperately need review because things have changed in the many, many years that have passed since this was enacted. In fact, this particular bill is a significant change, which by itself should result in a review of those criteria. Those criteria are archaic, outdated, and desperately need review.

These are the criteria for allocating the funding as between parties: “(a) the number of persons who voted at the … preceding general election …”—we think that is absolutely fine, because you can see what the results of the preceding general election were and know which parties got what support. But then in “(b) “the number of persons who voted at any by-election … since the … preceding general election …”—well, a by-election could happen within a few months of the preceding general election, and it may be nearly 3 years before the following general election takes place, so I do not see that that is particularly relevant. That needs to be reconsidered.

The third one is the number of members of Parliament a political party had immediately before the end of the last Parliament—also something easy to ascertain, and it is a fair consideration. Then there is this strange provision for any relationships that exist between one political party and another—any relationships. I heard what Chris Bishop had to say about that yesterday. He said that they should be taken into account and pointed to the one that currently exists between Labour and the Greens. Is that actually going to mean that either of those political parties will get less? I think they would jump up and down if that was to be the case, and so they should. So why is that there? It desperately needs to be reviewed.

The next one is other indications of public support, especially opinion polls. Well, you get a whole range of conflicting opinion polls, and they are notoriously inaccurate. It is not a consideration that should be taken into account, in our view. That desperately needs to be reviewed. So you can see that this bill is not being properly dealt with. It is not properly considered. This particular issue needs to be reviewed, and I want to ask the Minister why that review was not undertaken.

Kia ora, Mr Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this Committee stage debate of the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill. I particularly want to focus on Part 1, clause 4, inserting new Part 6, “Electoral broadcasting”, and to specifically focus on the definition of “election programme”. Just for those who are listening today, an election programme is defined as a programme that: “(a) encourages or persuades, or appears to encourage or persuade, voters to vote for a party or the election of a constituency candidate; or (b) encourages or persuades, or appears to encourage or persuade, voters not to vote for a party or the election of a constituency candidate;”.

I want to highlight that definition within the context of a recent Court of Appeal decision. That decision relates to a video entitled “Planet Key”. The song was performed by Darren Watson, and then the video was put together by Jeremy Jones. In 2014 that particular video was not allowed to be broadcast because the Electoral Commission made a determination that it breached the Electoral Act. Subsequently, Watson and Jones went to the High Court, and the High Court made a determination that, in fact, there was a breach of their freedom of artistic expression, and in October 2016 that was then upheld by the Court of Appeal.

The reason I bring it up is that we have to make sure, when we are considering this piece of legislation, that that particular court case is recognised by this House. What the court case actually said was that Watson and Jones were simply expressing their own political views as artists. They were not a political party and did not have a vested interest in the outcome. I think it is really important that we acknowledge that, because not to acknowledge that actually undermines the integrity of this process and that definition. I want to particularly note it because I have seen in recent times that artists are starting to express themselves in the political domain more and more. I saw an article about Nick Smith and a particular artist who is making a piece about him. I just bring it up because in a modern, democratic society we should not stifle the expression of our artists, our columnists, and our commentators in actually having a say within the context of what is happening in our country.

I also want to take the opportunity to highlight new section 74, inserted by clause 4, which is about the public allocation of $3.605 million that will be used in the forthcoming general election to enable political parties to advertise as they see fit. Historically, we have used party political broadcasts on TV and on radio, but what this piece of legislation does is enable parties to determine how they use that money—whether they advertise on the internet or whether they advertise in other mediums, not just specifically free-to-air TV or our public radio system. After this legislation goes through, parties will have the right to determine how they spend the money that they are allocated.

I want to highlight new section 80CA, inserted by clause 4. It is really interesting, because the allocation that parties will receive is not part of their party election expense—so parties do not have to write down in their party election expense, the public allocation that they are getting from the Electoral Commission, with one exception. Everyone should be aware of this. That exception is when some of that money is used by the party on individual candidates. Those individual candidates must include that in their returns—in their disclosure of candidate’s donations and also in the return of candidate’s election expenses. I think it is really important to highlight that. The party does not have to include it, but if the party uses some of that allocation specifically to highlight, for example, new candidates—parties may want to say to the public “Look who we’ve got on our team.”—that individual candidate must comply with the regulations and must put that in the return.

I am going to do a favour to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Mark Mitchell, by helping to answer a question that my colleague Chris Hipkins asked. It is about the relationship between the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill and the Electoral Amendment Bill. What the Electoral Amendment Bill does in clause 98B is insert new section 206IA, which is entitled “Return of party’s allocation expenses”. The parties must provide to the Electoral Commission a return of expenses—that is, the amount of the party’s allocation and all accounts sent by the party to the Electoral Commission—and it must include an auditor’s report.

It is quite clear why these are called cognate pieces of legislation, because they are inextricably related to one another. As a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee, I know—when you read through the commentary, this legislation was unanimously passed. It seems that other parties now have issues with these particular pieces of legislation, but the reason that we have expeditiously, I will call it, taken both of these bills through the House is that we want them to be available for the 2017 general election. We all know now that that is on 23 September.

I want to make another contribution when we are looking at the Electoral Amendment Bill, because these pieces of legislation have only catered to 12 of 28 recommendations. In fact, 16 other recommendations that the Justice and Electoral Committee unanimously made to the House have not been catered for. There is one in particular that I want to highlight in my next contribution. Thank you.

Can I acknowledge the last speaker, Louisa Wall, who did wrap some clarity around the issue that was raised by Mr Hipkins. Can I acknowledge the Justice and Electoral Committee, which worked on this legislation, and also acknowledge the comments made about having the legislation back in the House quickly so that it can be passed before our next election period.

This is an important piece of legislation in terms of continuing to allow the general public to have confidence in the transparency and accountability around our elections. So can I just acknowledge and thank the member for her comments.

I just want to also address very quickly, though, one point that Mr Hipkins did raise around the broadcasting of returns and why the return in relation to internet broadcasting was removed. There is a very simple explanation for that. It is just purely inoperable because of the nature of internet advertising. That is why it was removed. Expense returns are still sufficiently detailed to permit detailed scrutiny by the Electoral Commission. So those returns still catch the detail required by the commission.

In relation to the digital convergence paper that Clare Curran raised, all that work has been brought forward on that paper. The intention is that the work on that will then become a bill, but there are still items that have to be considered. That is an ongoing piece of work, but the work that has been done in relation to that digital convergence paper, of course, will go into the pending bill.

Another point that I want to address and raise was the one around on-the-day enrolment. The select committee did consider this. It spent a fair bit of time discussing it. I just want to refer back to some of the comments that were made by the select committee, and that was that the commission advised it that because of the numbers potentially involved, it would not be confident that it could validate election day special vote enrolment applications with integrity, without delaying the actual official count. The commission instead recommended that the question of whether election day special vote enrolment applications could be included in an official count should be considered for the 2020 election, in light of the lessons learnt in 2017. I think we will come back and revisit that, but it will be for the election in 2020.

The majority of the committee did consider that the focus of the commission should be to enrol electors early—to encourage people to get enrolled early, before election day rather than later—and also to protect the integrity of the roll by allowing time for it to be scrutinised, which I think is very, very important also. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Thank you for this opportunity. I rise to take a call on the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill.

I want to first congratulate the Minister in the chair, the Hon Mark Mitchell. It is fantastic to look across and see you there. You will get some hard questions, certainly, on the next bill, but I want to just congratulate you.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: I doubt that he is talking on the next bill.

That is true, and he did make some points in his contribution that actually relate to the next bill, and we will get there very shortly.

But on this particular bill, I do want to start by saying that I was fortunate enough to sit on the Justice and Electoral Committee to hear some of the submissions earlier in the process of the review. I want to say that we support this bill because it does make positive steps, moving forward. But when we look at these kinds of bills, there are always points where I think more definition is needed, just for clarity, just to make sure that people do not accidently get ankle-tapped by small things that could have been made a bit better in the bill.

I want to raise the point that Mr O’Rourke talked about on new sections 78(2)(d) and 78(2)(e), “Criteria for allocating money to party”, in clause 4. In paragraph (e) in particular it says: “any other indications of public support for that party, such as the results of public opinion polls and the number of persons who are members of that party;”. I do not know how many times I have seen poll results or heard poll results and thought to myself: “I fall in that demographic.” I would talk to a wide range of my friends and associates and wonder to myself “They never got a phone call. They were never polled. I’ve never been polled on a particular issue.”—some of those are around Te Reo Māori, or whatever it might be—and I have always wondered how they come up with these formulas, where these numbers come from, and how we can justify making a decision based on a very small section of the community. That is a bit of a concern to me, and I want to make sure that when the criteria for allocating money to a party is considered, we are considering sound formula, we are considering sound process, in the determination of allocating that money.

Polls—they come and go, and quite often they are wrong. We saw that in the Trump election. One minute it was clear that Mr Trump was not going to win, and all experts said that he was not going to. They still expected to see a Clinton triumph. Well, the polls were proven wrong. So that is just to the point around the polls—new section 78(2)(e).

In new section 78(2)(d) it says: “any relationships that exist between a party and any other party;”. We know that on the political landscape, and, in particular, leading up to election day or during an election year, a lot of things happen. The Internet Mana party happened, and I wonder just how specific that particular part of the bill needs to be, because it is pretty vague—“any relationships that exist between a party and any other party;”. I think that is pretty vague, and I would like to see, perhaps, some sharpening up there, just for some clearer definition or, certainly, an explanation from the Minister on why it is like that. I would like to hear that.

As I look across the Chamber I see Mr Jono Naylor over there. We are talking about broadcasting and how—

💬 Hon Annette King: He looks very happy.

Yes, he does look relieved, actually, and he will be, on 23 September. People do not watch TV. People do not listen to the radio. People are actually on the internet; people are on Facebook. Mr Naylor’s most successful advertisement—I guess you could call it—in his time here was actually his speech on Te Reo Māori that he shared on Facebook. It went to over a million viewers—over a million viewers—probably because of the topic as opposed to the speaker. But Te Reo Māori was his topic, and the point of that is that even though we are saying that TV is not your traditional platform, radio is not your traditional platform, just to say “the internet” is actually very broad—very wide. So the internet—I want to be specific and say Facebook. That member can put something up there and get that much exposure for nothing—for absolutely nothing—in terms of dollars. It was a bit of time and it was a bit of effort but that was about it, yet you can get that much exposure. So I wonder, when we are considering allocating and spending public funds, when you have got all of these platforms on the internet available to people at, some could argue, no cost—others would argue, well, they do cost something.

But as my colleague, Mr Hipkins, pointed out, what is a package of advertising? What does that look like? Facebook and my example of Mr Naylor is one of those questions I have. The internet—wow, that is pretty broad, pretty big, and pretty vague. I would like to see some sort of sharpening in the focus of that, because although I do applaud our efforts in moving in that direction to broadcast messages widely and to more people, we have just got to make sure that when it comes to the internet and the discussion of the use of the internet and advertising, we are clear on what does cost and what does not cost, and how those might be measured up in your allocation and in your returns. I am not an expert in this field, but I wonder whether the Minister would like to just provide some clarity around that for myself.

In conclusion to this part, I just want to say they are steps in the right direction. To the Minister in the chair’s point, only half, I think, or not quite half—that seems to be a common message from this Government, that it is happy to be around halfway—of the recommendations are being considered, and we will have some questions, in particular for the next bill that is up for debate. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Chair, ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. The Green Party supports this bill. We have supported it at all stages. We want to thank the Justice and Electoral Committee, which heard it, and the submitters. It is an interesting question because you could consider those opening and closing broadcasts to be a little bit of a relic of history—a relic of the TV age. But I am a little sad, if I am honest, because although they may be a relic, we have so few opportunities for long-form political discourse in the public sphere. There are very few opportunities, and, in fact, even debates now are condensed into these little sound bites. So, sure, maybe they were a relic, but maybe there are some lessons from other ages.

But there was a unanimous opinion, I believe, amongst the parties that we have to get with the times, particularly with taxpayers’ money. This replacing of Part 6 of the Broadcasting Act comes from the review of the 2014 election. If only the Government would actually pick up on some of the other electoral recommendations we have heard very clearly, such as the coat-tailing clause, and there are a whole bunch of other things that are not in the Government’s electoral interest, so it is not doing them.

In this case there are two reasons why I think it is in the Government’s interest. The first is it gets a great big wad of cash to go spend on digital ads, which we know it is very keen to do. The second is—and I was mulling, you know, that it must have been such a problem for the National Party. In the last opening and closing broadcast it had 31 minutes to fill—how do you fill 31 minutes when you are not acting on housing, when you are not acting on climate change, and when your key message is: “I’m relaxed about the state of the country, there’s nothing to see here.”? How did you fill 31 minutes? So I sympathise with the National Party with the conundrum it faces. Poor old ACT only had 3 minutes. National had to fill 31 minutes with not acting, so I can understand the challenge it was in.

We also know we have got a problem, which the select committee report identifies, around the wider rules when it comes to broadcasts. I think it was pretty tragic what happened when it came to that “Planet Key” video. I believe in freedom of speech for New Zealanders. I think elections are an important time for people to get involved and have a say, and it is disappointing that some parts of electoral law seem to be shutting that down. I note that in the report there is going to be action post the 2017 election. But I hope that, again, in the interests of working together in unanimity we can actually address this. Ultimately what we want to see is a public debate on issues, not using the law to stop it.

All in all we support this and look forward to it. At the last election it was the choice of either the All Blacks or the opening broadcast. I know which I would choose, even though I am a political tragic—of course I would choose the All Blacks. New Zealanders will not face that choice any more, but I think they will still be searching and using online tools. I want to congratulate the work of the likes of RockEnrol and other people doing civic advocacy so that people can access that information. The information is going to be there. People are going to have to do a little digging, and it is incumbent on parties and politicians to provide good, transparent information on their policies and platform and vision, and that is exactly what the Green Party will be doing. Kia ora.

I am happy to take a call on this bill here and to say, as my other colleagues have said, that the Labour Party supports this bill. I also want to acknowledge the Minister in the chair, Mark Mitchell, in the role that he has received—I hope that you are not going to be like some of your other colleagues who just lose themselves and forget where they came from. Be yourself.

This bill arises as a result of an inquiry that was undertaken by the Justice and Electoral Committee into the 2014 general election. I was surprised, though—and saddened—that in 2014 the major political debates were aired at the same time that the All Blacks games were on.

I have to say that, yes, things are changing in the media, but the reality is that there is a generation of New Zealanders who depend on TV programming and who depend on receiving the New Zealand Herald, or whatever the main paper is in their local area, for their political news. My dad, whom we had to force to retire for his own sake, for his health, at 78-years-old relies on TV. I suspect that that is where Mr Denis O’Rourke was coming from—it is that generation. For political news, my dad relies on TV ONE—TV3 he flicks through, but generally it is TV ONE. He has got a Facebook page that he does not know how to operate, so it is my sister who helps him to get on to the links on his Facebook page and see the comments from his family from all over the world. He is illiterate when it comes to that media.

I suspect that there is also a cohort of New Zealanders interested in politics who rely on the TV and want to receive that news, but who are illiterate when it comes to social media. I raise that for the Committee because, despite our believing that this is the right thing and despite it is also being welcomed by TV ONE and Radio New Zealand, I think it is important that we continue to have a discussion and debate about how to convey and communicate our political message to the rest of the population.

It is no accident that we have a million people who do not participate in the electoral process. There is a reason for that. I know that the young people—my 16-year-old son will pick up the phone, anybody’s phone, and soon he is communicating with friends. Whether it is Facebook or Chatbox—a social box there that they are talking through—or some game, they just do it fast. They are also up to date with a lot of information—he is asking questions about some of the antics that go on in this House. That generation will continue, as the world changes and develops, to get that information from various sources, but we still have this other generation that relies on one or two sources for its news and information. That is important.

I understand there were only seven submitters, and three of them gave oral submissions. I accept the argument that the select committee was faced with trying to get these changes in order in time for the 2017 general election, but I want to insist to this Committee that we do not collapse that process. It is a critical process. It is a process that I have, on occasion—as others, I am sure, have—held up to the international community, saying that we have one of the best select committee processes, one where our communities participate in helping us make better, high-quality decisions. Those are just a couple of points that I want to raise.

I now understand from my colleague Louisa Wall about the allocation of expense returns, and that for broadcasters this bill is now changed so that they do not have to submit returns, but it still falls on parties to make those returns and to ensure that those returns are full and complete. That was one question I had, which I believe has been answered by Louisa Wall.

Other than that, there are the offences under Part 6 of the Broadcasting Act. The Electoral Commission reports to the Police when it believes an offence has been committed. I am not quite sure, as I am not a member of that committee, whether it is just the Electoral Commission—[Bell rung] Mr Chair?

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Su’a William Sio. Just one point—we are not on the Electoral Act; we are on the first one—

Yes, but I am referring to the Electoral Commission’s broadcasting report, page 3, where it says—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, that is fine, but prior to that you just mentioned “under the Electoral Act”—so carry on.

Thank you. The question I am asking myself—as I was not a member of the committee, I did not hear any submissions—is whether it is just the Electoral Commission that has the right to report to the Police when it believes an offence has been committed, or whether that right is also available to any member of the general public. I assume that it is, but it does not stipulate directly that that is so here, so I am hopeful that the Minister in the chair might be able to answer that. Thank you for listening.